Unlike Fat Tuesday or St. Patrick's Day, April 19th may not strike you as an unofficial drinking holiday. But then you haven't been reading Jay Greene lately, who has created a nifty little drinking game to accompany Fordham's ESEA reauthorization proposal to be released tomorrow.
?The success of our society depends largely on the amount of confidence its citizens have in it... But too often, inequities in our tax system erode that confidence.''' *
No one ever said that education reform was easy.? And no one said that Race to the Top, the Obama administration's signature education law, was perfect.? But when David Steiner, a reformer's reformer, announced last week that he was giving up the reins as New York state's Commissioner of Education, the education world seemed to take a collective deep breath.
A New York Times-Chronicle of Higher Education collaboration yields a story about the lowly undergraduate business department, where slackers slack with impunity.
?There is something about the authenticity of the real thing?a letter, an ordinance, a battlefield, or photograph?that moves people and often makes them want to come back for more.''' *
Feeling fed up with bans on packed lunches, potential bans on breast cancer bracelets,
In a post on Tuesday, I quarreled with Kevin Carey's argument, in The New Republic, that Republican lawmakers are wrong to embrace federalism when it comes t
Ah, the trouble with teacher quality: While some hold grade-ins, others hold mock slave auctions.
Recent pieces by Jay Greene and Kevin Carey serve as effective bookends on the current ESEA debate picking up steam in Congress. They both appear to dislike the ?tight-loose?
The man who gave us Dilbert, that irascible cubicle-dweller, his tie perpetually upturned, whose daily?panel-by-panel ordeals presented a particularly pointed satire of the modern workplace with its indigestible euphemistic business-speak and mawkish sign-the-card rituals, has written a piece for the
?With the stars aligned, we have to seize this opportunity, let's stop dictating at the District level and let our local schools make the calls.''' * ?Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, CA
Running a school is the toughest job around, especially when you are ill prepared.
Yesterday afternoon my colleague Chris Irvine and I sat down with three of Denmark's most promising. They're elected leaders of the Association of Danish Pupils, the nation's student-run education-policy organization.
Georgia is on the road to eliminating seniority-based layoffs throughout the state. The big news is that they're replacing it with a flexible, sensible option for performance evaluation to be determined by local school and district managers.
?It isn't about ?I-me-my.' It's about 'we-us-our.''' * ?Jerry D. Weast, Former Superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools
Last September, Minnesota Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren adopted the Common Core standards in ELA but not in math, arguing that the state's existing math standards were far superior than the CCSS. With a new Commissioner, Brenda Cassellius, selected by the new Democratic governor, Republican lawmakers are now working to ensure that that decision cannot be revisited.
When Sheldon and Jeremy Stern reviewed the Minnesota social studies standards earlier this year, there was certainly much room for improvement.
Being a do-gooder is not easy, especially if one happens to be a multimillionaire celebrity attempting to do good in a?realm far removed from one's own land of expertise. Jamie Oliver knows all about this. He is an English chef who, for one reason or another, became incredibly famous and is now worth some $105 million.
Turning around low-performing schools is on
?Charter schools "are like the new Air Jordans, everybody wants to get them, and then when the dust settles, we realize that was a big mistake.'' * ?? Carole Tagoe, Mother, Global Village School
There is a wonderful moment in Jonathan Mahler's arresting New York Times Magazine story this morning about an inner city public school, when its entrepreneurial principal wanted to start the school day ten minutes earlier than the union contract called for.?
As you probably know by now, the President and Congress came to a budget agreement late last night that will keep the government operating through the end of the fiscal year.
GOAL! Sign up for this soccer- focused charter! Or join this ?underground railroad' for geniuses.
On Wednesday I suggested that furloughed federal employees might be a great source of volunteers for DC-area schools--if only someone could organize them.
?If somebody were judging us like we're judging these schools, we'd probably be a failing Congress.'' * ?? Rep. Howard P. McKeon, R-California
I just wanted to give a quick shout-out from the Education Writers Association meeting in New Orleans.
I was just re-reading sections of The Making of Americans by Don Hirsch, preparing to send out some encouraging words to my local district Board of Ed Curriculum Committee, when a new
?David Steiner got none of the negative press that Cathleen Black received when he was appointed Commissioner of New York State's Education Department in October of 2009.
